People that inspire me - Rob Beucler

There are 45 weeks left in the year and once a week I will write about someone in my life that is inspiring or motivating to me.  Hopefully others will read it and gain a little bit of inspiration in their life as well.  There is no particular order to these writings, just a bunch of people I am fortunate enough to know.  So without further ado ….

Inspirational person #6 of 50 – Rob Beucler

Rob Beucler was my high school track coach and, without a doubt, one of the most influential people in my life.

He was also my JV basketball coach as a freshman and my math teacher in junior high.  Rob graduated from Eastern High School in 1978 and then began to teach and coach.  He has coached junior high girls’ basketball, freshman, JV and Varsity boys’ basketball as well as track and cross country.  As a varsity basketball coach for the past 22 years he’s won an incredible 337 games.  As a track and cross country coach he had tremendous success for nearly two decades, winning countless league and district titles and sending many runners onto the next level of college running.

Where I grew up, basketball pretty much rules the roost and all other sports seem not as important.  Even though Coach Beucler coached basketball he made sure that track and cross country felt just as important to the kids on the team.  He wasn’t a natural running coach but he worked very hard to push us to be as good as we could.  By my senior year we had one of the best track and field/cross country programs in all of Southern Ohio, culminating in beating every Division II school in Cincinnati for a district championship.  All of this without a track.  We had a grass field, one starting block and three hurdles.  But we never complained about what we didn’t have.  Rob wouldn’t let us.  We simply worked harder and smarter than our opponents and Coach Beucler made sure we more prepared than anyone we came up against. 

As a basketball coach, he was very hard-nosed and demanding of his players.  I remember playing out of fear from time to time but also remembering playing as hard as I could so I wouldn’t let him down.  I was taught not to take anything personal from a coach giving me a butt-chewing, and Coach Beucler certainly did plenty of that, but his yelling at me or my teammates was always for a reason.  When we did something good he was also quick to give a compliment and enthusiastic affirmation.  Without a doubt, he got the most out of his players on the court because of his relentless passion and competitiveness.

Everyone who played or ran for Rob can tell countless stories.  Some are funny and some are tales of horror.  I remember one Saturday morning after a bad loss in basketball the night before. I walked into the gym for practice and usually grabbed a basketball to shoot around to get warmed up but there were no balls anywhere.  When Rob and Coach Lewis walked out I asked if I could get a ball.  I can still remember Rob saying, “We won’t be needing any basketballs today.”  And then we proceeded to run the entire practice for every point we lost by.  We didn’t lose a game after that for lack of effort – point made.

As a track coach he was definitely more laid back.  But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t demanding or tough.  It didn’t matter if it was basketball, track or checkers – if you were involved with Coach Beucler you knew he wanted to win.  And he usually did.

More about Rob down below but first …

I asked Rob five questions, here are his responses …

Question 1:  What drives you to be successful?

Rob:  What drives me is the want to be successful and the hard work in doing it.  I don’t want to be outworked.

Question 2: How do you spend the majority your free time these days?

Rob:  I usually spend it with my grandchildren and family as well as working with athletes to help them follow their dreams.

Question 3:  What comes to mind when you think of your childhood?

Rob:  Memories.  Farm life and the different things we did growing up.  Tobacco, carpenter work with my dad and the family get togethers while learning to enjoy sports.  Especially basketball in the fifth grade, introduced and created an interest by a guy named Dale Bunn.

Question 4:  What does success mean to you?

Rob:  Success used to mean winning but the idea has developed into knowing that you have given your best to accomplish something and knowing you did your best to reach your potential.

Question 5:  Who inspires you?

Rob:  My parents for instilling a work ethic that you do the best at whatever you are doing.  My wife for keeping me balanced in life with the important things and not going OCD on one.  The different people that have made my life have meaning – coaches, friends, family members, grandchildren that have become successful over the years.  My accomplishments are seen in how the people I have come in contact with have done.  Then I can know I was successful.  Changing lives for the better.  I try to look at the successful programs around – football/basketball/baseball/business and see what they have in common and use that to help me and our kids.  Coaching in the school system has given me many opportunities to touch many lives and it has been rewarding to see the success of those people.

Final thoughts … Why is Rob Beucler inspirational to me?

Now that I’ve been a coach for almost 20 years myself it’s easy to see the influence Rob Beucler had on me.  As a coach, I’m a combination of him and my current boss Steve Rainbolt.  Bolt is known for being the ultimate “players coach” so to speak while Rob often drove players crazy with his demanding style.  Rob expects your best effort and will let you know about it if you don’t give it.  I see a lot of that in myself with my current athletes and I feel so lucky to have been coached by Rob in high school.

I didn’t know anything about coaching or training when I was in high school so whatever workouts Rob gave us I did as well as I could without questioning.  I believed in him and he could make you believe you could do anything.  As a junior I qualified for the state track meet for the first time and I was pretty nervous running in Ohio State’s 100,000 seat stadium.  But my confidence that Rob had prepared me the best that he could gave me all the focus I needed and I proceeded to win a state title in the 400m dash.  I had always dreamed of doing great things in sports and that day was the first time I felt like I ever really started to accomplish some of those dreams and I have Rob to thank for it.

Eventually I got recruited and given a scholarship to run at Kent State and have been living out my dreams ever since.  I’m confident none of that would have been possible without the help of Rob Beucler.  As you read above, and I can attest to now, your sense of accomplishment as a coach rests with what you see athletes achieve.  You don’t get a lot of recognition and you don’t get tons of thank you’s – especially from the athletes you coach.

Rob could have gone onto coach at the collegiate level and would have been just as successful if he did.  But his loyalty to Eastern High School, his family and the people of Brown County show what kind of person his really is.  Rob always knew the right time to soften his stance so that his players could reach their potential.  It’s a delicate balance that is termed the “art of coaching” and Rob was definitely an artist with how he could motivate everyone he worked with.

If the term “a method to his madness” was ever meant for one person, it would definitely be for Rob Beucler.  I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t even know it after I had left Eastern, but now I understand that “madness” in my teenage years was all worth it and has helped me be successful, not only in athletics, but in all walks of my life.

This winter I had a chance to go back to Eastern and chat with Rob before a basketball game.  I saw the kids run onto the court like I used to and play as hard as they could in another Warrior victory and it made me feel good that so many other kids before, during and since my time at Eastern has had the privilege to be coached by Rob.  In life sometimes you work hard for what you get and sometimes you get lucky.  Rob helped me learn what it meant to work hard to get what I wanted and I was the luckiest guy in the world for being able to learn from one of the best.

Rob – congratulations for a career full of accomplishments and achievements and thank you for what you have done for hundreds of young people through the years.  I know I speak for many, many people who would not be where they are without you.